Chapter 540: Hymnal

Owyn’s mind refused to believe that Arc was dying as he sped through the sewers, his body crouched protectively over her as he looked for a way out. He had no idea how deep underground they were, and he knew from hunting how little time it took for beings to bleed to death when an artery was cut. He had to hurry.

"Wait!" Steven shouted at his back.

Without the stress of combat, he was able to boost his speed, and very quickly, he left the gang leader behind as he sped through the tunnels, shoving aside the spark of guilt at abandoning Raven’s rescue as desperation clouded his mind. Every heartbeat counted as Arc’s life drained.

And then he saw it. A shaft of light from above that looked nothing like the lights of the sewers. Turning his steps, he sped for the light, only for a net of thick ropes to suddenly rise and entangle him as he burst into the room.

Such was Owyn’s speed and weight that the two ratkin manning the pulleys flanking the entry were jerked off the floor, both managing to let go of the ropes just in time to take only minor burns to their palms. The giant was barely able to tuck himself protectively around Arc as he fell, but it loosened his hold on her, allowing a fresh pulse of blood to stain his cracked and bleeding forearm. In a panic, he returned his hand to keeping the pressure on Arc’s throat as he shouted, "Let us go! She needs a healer!" as more sewer dwellers appeared, many armed with hooked poles and kitchen knives.

"Shut it, Raider!" one deep-voiced ratkin responded, signaling the others to pull Owyn onto his back before startling with a backwards hop as he noticed Arc’s bleeding throat.

With tears in his eyes, Owyn begged, "She needs a healer. Please! I’ll do anything!"

"Are you with the thugs that just came through here?" the leader asked.

"No. We were chasing them. They took one of our friends," Owyn explained quickly. "We’re just students, I swear."

With a grunt, the ratkin turned, "Fetch Fredi. Hurry." He sounded unconcerned yet serious, and one of the ratkin women dropped to all fours to speed away faster than Arc could go. Even after she left, he made no effort to extract them from under the net.

In blessedly short order, the ratkin woman returned with a female mousekin, a long-legged type that Owyn had never seen before.

"Oh, criminy," Fredi gasped as she approached. "Tharl! Why didn’t you let her out of the net?"

Tharl, the leader, grunted and gestured, and the net was lifted enough to give better access to Arc, but not so much as to let Owyn free, since his legs were still tangled. At least it got the net out of his face.

Fredi hopped over and crouched, planting an ear on Arc’s chest. This close, Owyn could see she was of an older age. "She’s still got a heartbeat, but it’s very weak. As soon as I finish healing her, you need to give her breath and start compressions."

"What?" Owyn didn’t understand, but Fredi ignored him as she lay her hands on Arc and, to his surprise, started singing. And Owyn was entranced as he felt the magic of her hymn.

Come you, red life, and to my child shall be,

Then and thereafter, to all memory

Remembered like the rose we grew a-day,

And wandering blood shall bear our seeds away;

For you have given to the world a rose

To grace the world with ever-smiling glows;

Mana’s fadeless flower none may frame,

To destiny a cut and lay a claim.

For yet upon the deathbed she may heal,

Though shroud split her from sight and make alone,

Our windborne seed who flew so far afield,

And returned to the warmth of waiting home.

Beneath his hands, Owyn felt Arc’s wounds begin to close, but when Fredi pulled his hand away to check, the punctures in her neck were still bleeding. Quickly, she began again, but this time Owyn joined her. Fredi looked up at him, bringing her voice up and a bit slower so that he could match her cadence.

Though he faltered on a few words, he could feel his magic somehow combining with hers as it flowed into Arc.

The next time she pulled Owyn’s hands away, Arc’s wounds were completely healed, leaving only a pair of semi-triangular scars on both sides of her throat. She wasn’t breathing-

"Start breathing for her, boy!" Fredi snapped when Owyn stared too long. "You’ve the biggest lungs here."

"I don’t know how!"

Fredi snapped into action, demonstrating before she made Owyn try it. Though he blushed profusely, he took a deep breath and began.

~

As she lay dying, Arc found herself in a familiar-looking field.

She was by the lake where her family’s old house had been, before it burned down. But when she looked around, neither ruins nor the home she remembered were about, and Norneau was just a distant grey blur.

The strangest thing, though, was that while the field and lake were alight as if in daylight, above her the sky was an inky black that faded into purples and blues at its edges, and all throughout were strange clouds and sparkles. They looked so clear and bright, she felt she could touch them if only she could fly.

When she thought about that, she noticed her wings were out, but an experimental flap proved no more useful lifting her from the ground than in real life.

Of course... this is a dream. How did I get here? she wondered, right before a realisation struck her. She cast her gaze upward and spoke aloud. "Stars... those are real stars!" She had to get to them. One of the reasons she wanted to be a dragon knight was to get as close to the sky as she could if the Veil opened in her lifetime. To see the sparkling sky that her father told her stories about.

The gray blur that was Norneau seemed just barely tall enough to touch the inky darkness, and so she ran there, the city resolving itself into existence as she sprinted through it. Some parts, however, remained blurred out while others seemed to repeat places that she knew.

She ran through the cafeteria and up the stairs to Chancellor Imogen’s office, but when she slammed opened the door, she found herself stepping into her bedroom at the Academy instead.

"This isn’t fair..." she groaned. Then she noticed something sitting in the middle of her living space. It looked like a giant cocoon, covering the trapdoor that led to Owyn’s room. Through a crack, a thick tendril of silk slipped down past the trapdoor, but all that waited below it was a darkness that somehow gave her the impression of swirling.

She reached forward and touched it, and suddenly she had a strong impression of Owyn’s body against hers, their lips locked together and she tasted his breath for a moment, like mint with notes of citrus, before his hands on her chest pushed down in a strange, pumping motion. Then the vision passed, leaving her on her knees and embarrassed.

"No. No-no. No!" she said to herself. It wasn’t that she found the hallucination disgusting, though she did find it more than a little weird, but rather that she felt she wasn’t ready to start thinking of Owyn in terms of a relationship.

A notion seized her, and she reached forward, intending to pull the tendril away from its lodgement in the trapdoor...

"Stop," a husky, tired female voice suddenly commanded, and Arc turned to find herself staring at the magic window. Through it, she saw the field of stars, but centered in the image was a person she didn’t recognize, seated upon a triangular throne. The robes she wore kept her body from Arc’s sight, and the hood was held in place by a crown depicting an angel and a demon holding a sword with eight branches. Over her face, there was a featureless platinum mask that sent Arc’s reflection back to her. "If you break that thread, you will die. If you touch those waters, you will die... You are not ready to pass through that gate."

"Who are you?" Arc asked, sure now that she’d never seen or heard this person in her life.

The stranger remained silent. Arc touched the glass of her magic window and suddenly she was standing a few paces from the stranger and her throne. All around her, a sudden pressure pushed her to one knee, black mana swirling in patterns that inked over the stars before passing. But through the darkness she saw something new.

A single, white thread, tying her to the stranger. When she looked down, she found that past her body she saw iridescent threads that melded across the spectrum in color, and all around were smaller threads, some leading out from her in unknowable directions, some coming up from the ground as barely visible strands in the wind.

"What is happening?" Arc asked.

Somehow, she felt a bitter smile behind the mask as the woman spoke.

"You are close to death, and so you are close to me."

The solemnness with which she spoke those words didn’t stop Arc from asking she felt they invited.

"Who..."